Silent Hell
by kinneas
Summary: Hell is other people. Slash. Not what you want.
1. blossoming scent of decay

**Title: Silent Hell**.  
**Author:** Kinneas.  
**Warnings:** Violence, male slash of the weird kind.  
**Summary:** Heaven and Hell are relative.  
**Notes:** You know, I really wish I had any idea what the hell this thing is.  
.  
.  
.  
.  
.  
.  
It is more out of fright than anything else.

Two men, two very different men, but both trapped in a hell worse than Hell itself.

Except James always thought that purgatory would be worse. At least Hell was endless suffering, endless pain. In purgatory, amidst the screams of the damned, was a tiny glimmer of hope and redemption. Mary had argued him, Hell of course was worse, but then she'd always been very devout and serious about her Catholic roots.

And where they are now... neither of the two know anything of what is to come and what has passed, but still they cling to the faint glint of optimistic, dim hope.

But it gets harder each day.

How long have they been here now, anyway? It seems like an eternity.

No, Harry says. We would have gone insane by now.

James wonders if they aren't already.

When they'd first met in the abandoned, rusting, decrepit building that might have once been a Texxon in the past, they were both nervous wrecks, identical black Beretta 9mm's aimed shakily at each other.

Harry lowered his gun first. "Ahh... sorry..." he apologized timidly, brushing longish filthy brown hair from his nervous eyes. The other stared down at him for a moment, gun still leveled, confused and terrified as a droplet of sweat from the fog outside trickled down the bridge of his nose.

"I thought you were," Harry hesitated, unsure of his own sanity and perception. After all, he'd been completely alone for so long in this bloody, dead place. "...something else."

James doesn't know what he is. He doesn't know how he got here, to this evil town, where he's going, or even what he's doing now. Especially what he's doing now.

But Harry remembers. He remembers the slash of the knife ripping through his shoulder and scraping against bone as he desperately pounded on the chain-link fence so clearly it hurts. He remembers the searing pain when the other sliced down his back, tearing viciously through tendon and muscle and flesh. He remembers his bloodied scream as cold steel wrenched through his gut in the back alley lit only by the dying flare as it fell from his red-stained fingertips.

He remembers dying. Everything after that is fuzzy.

He imagines that if he could sleep, he'd have nightmares about it.

James agrees.

He is envious, though. The only things James knows are sin and Harry, and that really isn't much.

When James had finally released the trigger, his frayed nerves at last gave out and he'd collapsed lifelessly to the floor.

Occasionally they wonder what the measurement of normality is anymore. Would dashing down ever-changing hallways at top speed, followed only by the creak and scrape of metal dragged slowly across tarnished metal become expected routine? Become _normal_?

James doesn't think so. Harry isn't so sure. He was the writer, after all. He used to enjoy getting lost in his own mind.

"Hey," James calls from the windowsill, looking down three stories as the town below. "I think it's changing again."

Harry looks up from the papers he's been sifting through, old city documents salvaged from the Center business district. He rises from the floor and moves to the large window James is sitting at, hovering over him like a shadow in the dark. "Are you sure?" he asks, but he already knows. The knotted wood on the windowsill is already rotting and blackened.

They breathe in silence, simply glad to still feel a rush of adrenaline and fresh fear instead of dead acceptance.

Finally James stands as well, leaning against the window with a braced arm, and they both stare fornlornly at the dimming city. He closes his eyes wearily, trying not to breathe in the blossoming scent of painful decay.

It never rains in the town, James has noticed. There have been a million and a million more moments since he arrived here where the pounding of rain over grating or asphalt, falling forever into a black abyss or merely puddling on the graying street, would have been perfect, the absolute complement. But it never rains. Ever. There is only fog and dirt.

When James opens his eyes, the world is bloody and the window is stained.

Harry looks up at him, and James looks back.

It is more out of fright than anything.


	2. slowly and silently

  
  
or maybe just desperation

Eyes close and patches of metal grating beneath black sweatervest and M-65 military fieldjacket creaks and in the distance, a dog barks. Each thinks of another and both wish they were anywhere but where they are, but still lips meet in hot breath and hands tousle slicked-back brown hair and fingers brush up thighs of faded jeans and everything is all wrong.

Even in the warmth, it is still cold.

It is always cold here.

Eternity is never warm.

They are cold, but every little thing helps.

probably desperation


	3. exit stage left

They hear a scrape three floors below and sit up. Then they run.

_-fin_


End file.
